And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [40]
“Don’t be silly.” The nurse jiggled my baby in her arms. “Of course she likes you. You’re her mum.”
“I don’t like my mum.”
The nurse smiled at Shinola. “You want to go back to mummy now, don’t you?”
The baby started howling again.
“You see?” I said. “I told you.”
The nurse laughed. “I’ll just take her to the nursery. See if I can get her back to sleep.”
It was after she disappeared that I got really depressed. Everybody else was sleeping peacefully. Why shouldn’t they be? They all had homes with fathers to go back to. When they woke up in the morning their babies’ dads would all be there with fruit and messages from their friends and probably a stack of post.
I wished I’d asked Hilary to bring Mr Ted to the hospital. I could’ve told her it was for the baby. Mr Ted always slept with me, unless Les stayed the night. I really missed him. I sort of bunched up my pillow and pretended I was hugging a bald teddy bear with only one eye, but it wasn’t the same.
That’s when I started to cry. Just a little at first, but then I really started sobbing. All these thoughts were sort of rushing at my head. There were so many that I didn’t know what any of them were. Plus, I didn’t want to know. There was something really scary trying to ram itself through my brain. But I wasn’t going to let it in.
I tried to sing “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” in my head but I couldn’t. I stopped thinking about anything and just let myself cry.
The nurse came back with the baby, but when she saw the state I was in she took her back to the nursery. Then she brought me a cup of tea.
“Feeling better?” she asked as I sipped.
I nodded.
“Almost everybody gets a little blue after they’ve had a baby,” she told me. “It’s the hormones.”
“Really?” I snuffled into a tissue. “That’s all?”
She fluffed up my pillows.
“That’s all,” she said cheerfully. She straightened out my blankets. “Once you get home and settled with your baby you’ll be as right as rain.”
She was one of the older nurses. She was always nice and very calm.
“You think so?”
She took my cup.
“I know so.”
I decided to believe her.
Motherhood
Being at home after the hospital was worse than going back to school after the summer holidays; a big disappointment. The Spiggs gave me a couple of days to recover, but after that she made it pretty clear that she expected me to do everything myself.
“I’m not your private nurse, Lana,” she informed me. “The party’s over. Time to join the real world.”
I had no one to talk to like I did on the ward. I couldn’t talk to her and all my friends were still away. There was no one else around except Mrs Mugurdy. For the first time in my life I was relieved when August finally staggered to an end.
Shanee came over as soon as she got back from Ireland. She brought Shinola some socks, a T-shirt that said “I’m a Full-time Job”, and a rubber ducky. She didn’t bring anything for me.
“So how’s it going?” asked Shanee.
She was standing behind me, watching me change Shinola.
I dodged a small foot that was trying to put out my front teeth.
“It’s brilliant,” I said. “It really is what life is all about.” I pulled Shinola’s fist off the nappy tape and sealed her up. “I can’t believe there was ever a time when I didn’t have her.” Which was true in more ways than one; I could hardly go to the toilet without taking her with me.
Shinola went red and rigid at the same time.
“Maybe you did it up too tight,” Shanee suggested.
Since it was the first time I’d seen her since Shinola was born, I didn’t snap at her the way I would have snapped at Hilary Spiggs.
“It’s not too tight,” I said, watching the greeny-brown mess that was baby diarrhoea creep out on to her thighs. “She’s got the splatters.”
Shanee told me all about her holiday while I put another nappy on Shinola. I was too busy clucking and cooing over Shinola to really listen.
Shanee followed me into the kitchen when I went to feed Shinola.
She was still banging on about her holiday and some boy she met who took her for a ride on his motorcycle.
“Wow,” I said,